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Lightship No. 82 (Buffalo)

Ontario waters · lost 1913

No public position. General area: Off Point Abino, Ontario, about 10 miles across the lake from the Buffalo harbor entrance.

Lightship No. 82 before the 1913 storm
Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Toned for this site.

Lightship No. 82 was anchored off Point Abino, Ontario, to mark the approach to Buffalo when the Great Lakes Storm of November 1913 struck. She stayed on station and was driven under with all six of her crew. Raised the next year, she went back into service; the Point Abino lighthouse later replaced her.

The story

The shoal off Point Abino, on the Ontario shore about ten miles from Buffalo's harbor, had long worried mariners. A U.S. lighthouse inspector urged a light there as early as 1855, and a 1907 request for a lightship got no money from Congress; until 1912 the shoal was marked only by buoys.[2]

Lightship No. 82, built in 1911 by the Racine-Truscott-Shell Lake Boat Company at Muskegon, Michigan, for the U.S. Lighthouse Service, was about 95 feet long and was placed on the Point Abino station to guide ships bound for Buffalo.[1,2]

In November 1913 the Great Lakes were hit by the storm remembered as the Big Blow or White Hurricane. It raged from November 7 to 10, killed more than 250 people and destroyed 19 ships, and Wikipedia calls it the deadliest natural disaster in the recorded history of the lakes.[3] Lightship No. 82 stayed at her assigned station and was sunk with all six men aboard; Wikipedia's 1913 shipwreck list files the loss under November 10.[1,4] The Buffalo Lighthouse Association records that only one of the six bodies was ever found.[5]

Searchers located the wreckage on May 13, 1914, two miles from her station in 63 feet of water. After two salvage attempts failed, she was lifted with pontoons and sent for repair.[1] She served as a relief lightship from 1916 to 1925 and then on the Eleven Foot Shoal station until she was decommissioned in 1936. A plan to move her to a veterans' post in Massachusetts never happened; vandals burned her at the dock and she was scrapped.[1]

Two other lightships, Nos. 96 and 98, took her place off Point Abino, but the station was discontinued in 1918 once Canada's Point Abino lighthouse was working.[5,2]

Sources differ: Lost during the storm of November 7–10, 1913; Wikipedia's 1913 shipwreck list files the loss under November 10.

Lives lost: All six crew died; only one body was ever found, according to the Buffalo Lighthouse Association.

Questions people ask

What happened to the Buffalo lightship in 1913?

Lightship No. 82 stayed on her station off Point Abino, Ontario, during the Great Lakes Storm of November 1913 and sank with all six crew. Only one body was ever found.

Is the Buffalo lightship still on the bottom?

No. She was found in 63 feet of water in May 1914, raised and returned to service until 1936, and was later burned by vandals and scrapped.

Learn more

Museums and groups are linked for further reading; they are not connected with this site.

Look, don't take

Look, don't take. Shipwrecks and everything on them are protected by law; removing or disturbing anything can be a crime.

  • Ontario: under the Ontario Heritage Act no one may alter a marine archaeological site or remove an artifact from it without a provincial licence; fines for breaking this rule can reach $1,000,000.[6][7][8]

How Lake Erie wrecks are protected

Diving Lake Erie wrecks is dangerous: cold water, poor visibility, depth, entanglement and boat traffic. Nothing here is dive guidance or a dive position. Dive only with proper training, a qualified operator and current information from the groups that maintain moorings.

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Sources

  1. United States lightship Buffalo (LV-82), Wikipedia. Accessed .
  2. Point Abino Light Tower, Wikipedia. Accessed .
  3. Great Lakes Storm of 1913, Wikipedia. Accessed .
  4. List of shipwrecks in 1913, Wikipedia. Accessed .
  5. Ships | Buffalolighthouse, Buffalo Lighthouse Association. Accessed .
  6. law-on-oha-part6, Government of Ontario (e-Laws). Accessed .
  7. law-on-oreg-11-06, Government of Ontario (e-Laws). Accessed .
  8. Atlantic (1848 ship), Wikipedia. Accessed .

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